• by Karlene Lukovitz , September 6, 2023

Twenty-six publishing and journalism organizations from around the world have released a set of principles meant to guide development, deployment and regulation of artificial intelligence systems and applications.

The Global Principles for Artificial Intelligence (AI) “are aimed at ensuring publishers’ continued ability to create and disseminate quality content, while facilitating innovation and the responsible development of trustworthy AI systems,” say the groups.

The News/Media Alliance, News Media Association, News Publishers’ Association, Digital Content Next, the World Association of News Publishers, the European Magazine Media Association and FIPP are among the signatories. (All signatories are shown above, as well as online, along with the full principles.)

The principles address issues relating to intellectual property, transparency, accountability, quality and integrity, fairness, safety, design, and sustainable development.

They state that AI tools must be developed in accordance with established principles and laws that protect publishers’ intellectual property, brands, consumer relationships and investments, adding that AI systems’ current “indiscriminate misappropriation of our intellectual property is unethical, harmful, and an infringement of our protected rights.”

 “AI systems are only as good as the content they use to train them, and therefore developers of generative AI technology must recognize and compensate publishers accordingly for the tremendous value their content contributes to the development of these systems,” states News/Media Alliance President and CEO Danielle Coffey.

The principles state that developers, operators, and deployers of AI systems should:

• Respect intellectual property rights protecting the organizations’ investments in original content.
• Leverage efficient licensing models that can facilitate innovation through training of trustworthy and high-quality AI systems.
• Provide granular transparency to allow publishers to enforce their rights where their content is included in training datasets.
• Clearly attribute content to the original publishers of the content.
• Recognize publishers’ invaluable role in generating high-quality content for training, and also for surfacing and synthesizing.
• Comply with competition laws and principles and ensure that AI models are not used for anti-competitive purposes.
• Promote trusted and reliable sources of information and ensure that AI generated content is accurate, correct and complete.
• Not misrepresent original works.
• Respect the privacy of users that interact with them and fully disclose the use of their personal data in AI system design, training, and use.
• Align with human values and operate in accordance with global laws.